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"Rarely has a president wrestled with the grim trade-offs of war as publicly and as agonizingly as Mr. Obama has over the last six years. He wanted to get away from the messy ground wars that his predecessor waged in Iraq and Afghanistan and institute a seemingly cleaner, more exacting form of war, one waged only when there was 'near certainty' that civilians would not be hurt.

"But the strike that killed Warren Weinstein, a 73-year-old American aid worker, and the Italian hostage, Giovanni Lo Porto, 37, in January underscored that there is no such thing as near certainty in war, even one waged with precision instruments like the drones swarming the skies of places like Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. The only near certainty of war is that innocents die and that presidents have to live with the consequences."

— New York Times, April 24, 2015

There is an old saying that the first casualty in war is truth. And if the second casualty is the innocent civilian, both casualties are intertwined in the accidental deaths of two hostages during a January drone strike against suspected members of al-Qaida in Pakistan.

Wyden declined to discuss what he knew, but said the Obama administration has an obligation to be straight with the public. As part of that, he said, the administration should confirm the basic details, such as whether it was an airstrike, or a ground operation, that killed the hostages and which agency carried it out.

Wyden recognizes that security and liberty are not mutually exclusive. A free society can allow some government secrets. But government should be as cautious about what to keep secret as it is in deciding what to disclose.

"The public right to know and protecting legitimate secrets — so as to protect American forces in harm's way — they're not incompatible," Wyden said.

"The operative principle is, operations have to be kept secret. I get that. You don't give out what's called sources and methods, because if you do Americans can die — courageous Americans can die.

"But it's also important to have an informed public."

Since 2004, the U.S. has conducted more than 400 drone strikes in Pakistan alone. By being overly secretive, the Obama administration reinforces the falsehood that war can be conducted in a sanitized way, even for the U.S. military.

The reality is that drone attacks take an emotional toll on the U.S. personnel who conduct those strikes, often from hundreds or thousands of miles away. The reality also is that although Obama in 2013 called for "near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured" before a strike is launched, that standard is open to interpretation in the real-life decisions of war.

And the fact is that even in war, there are international laws — for those who follow them — that govern what a nation legally can do.

Americans deserve the facts, Mr. President, even when they are painful.